


Stingrays and Iceskates

by goodloser



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, First Meetings, Implied/Referenced Abuse, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-08
Updated: 2019-11-08
Packaged: 2021-01-25 09:54:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,702
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21354361
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/goodloser/pseuds/goodloser
Summary: Claude was fast to catch him before he left. His voice was its useful play. “Forgive me if you’ve heard this one before, but what’s a place like you doing in a thing like this?”diner au. not a coffeeshop au. fuck coffeeshops we drink cheap bean water like menit doesn't come up but claude is trans know that as you read thank you
Relationships: Lorenz Hellman Gloucester/Claude von Riegan
Comments: 6
Kudos: 93





	Stingrays and Iceskates

Hardy’s First Class was anything but first class; the kind of joint white guys with neck tats reading  _ chicken _ in Mandarin frequented with their gas station girlfriends, but that was one of the two reasons why Claude liked to come here and simmer in the least graffitied corner of the diner. With a dirty coffee in one hand and an unidentifiable burger in the other, he could slip away into a world where he was a nobody instead of his sudden heir-estate-Richie-Rich situation.

The second reason he came here so often was to ogle one of the waiters: a tall glass of water with long, straight hair swept to a perfect drape over his shoulder and slim legs that stood for days. Doll was far too pretty, far too  _ noblesque _ in the way he would delicate a strand behind his ear as he took Claude’s order to be working in a dump like this, but he guessed he could say the same for himself — every time, Claude was clearly the hottest guy in the room; apart from that waiter. So they already had something in common. Cute.

The mystery of why the waiter worked here — nothing short of a red rose in a basement — was something Claude liked to pluck at. You ate at a diner for cheap comfort and bad food, but you sure as hell didn’t work there for it. He did his best (or maybe, not the best, but only as good as it could get while still feeling like a game) to strike up some small talk and maybe a number, but the waiter tended towards curt in his answers. 

Maybe he correctly placed Claude a nuisance, or maybe he was reaching the end of his tether in a dingy washbasin restaurant.

“Americano and your pie, mister,” came that deep tone. A plate and mug were placed in front of him.

Claude was fast to catch him before he left. His voice was its useful play. “Forgive me if you’ve heard this one before, but what’s a place like you doing in a thing like this?”

“It’s ‘what’s a  _ guy _ like you doing in a  _ place _ like this.’”

“Reading the paper,” he smirked, and patted  _ the Afternoon Express _ on the table beside him: open to page 3, Presidential Address.

“Very clever,” was the reply. The waiter didn’t look too amused, apart from the quirks at the corners of his mouth Claude couldn’t help but notice.

“For real, though. I can tell you’re not the same cloth.”

The waiter looked around at the diner; not too many guests this early on a Tuesday. He wiped his hands on his apron for a moment before muttering  _ very well _ and taking the seat across from him.

Claude drank in every detail he could: the grace of the act and the prim in his posture. Even the short heels — guy liked to be tall.

(Claude liked the extra lift that his discreet loafers gave him, too, but that was his little secret.)

“I am just doing some soul searching, I suppose,” the waiter cooed a nonanswer once he’d settled himself with his hands on his knees and patted his hair down.

Claude leant forward on an elbow. “In this part of Leicester? I hear the Coast at Edmund is nice this time of year. Meditative, if you believe thatways.”

“I’m not too keen on the North.”

“You do look like you need some sun,” he laughed. “Whatever you’re looking for, I hope you find it.”

The waiter eyed him over. His thin eyebrows were set into a very decidedly neutral expression. He tilted his head slightly (to his right and it tilted his neck so Claude could see a sliver of the skin under his jaw, and yes, he liked  _ that _ display very much) and Claude could feel himself being properly sized up for the first time.

He was familiar with that feeling, indeed.

But then the waiter smiled and said, “Perhaps I am, now. Thank you. My name is Lorenz Hellman Gloucester.” He added that last bit with a pianist’s hand pushed to his chest.

“Lorenz, nice to meetcha.” Claude reached over the table to quirk a handshake. “I’m Claude.”

“Not polite enough to give me the benefit of a surname.”

“Haha. Alright, if you don’t look me up on the stock market. It’s Von Riegan.”

Lorenz’s gaze fell to the plate, for a moment, and there again was that forcefully impartial expression. “How… interesting.”

Claude stroked his chin. Any of his friends knew he’d now have that  _ gotcha _ ting in his eyes — the telltale sign he’d just figured out something juicy. “How so? Oi, oi, I’ve only been CEO for a few years, so a lot of those takeovers weren’t on me. Familiar with business, are you, Lorenz?”

“How familiar am I if I’m working in a place like this?” Lorenz laughed quietly, though mostly to himself it seemed.

“Funny, you have the same name as the president of the Gloucester Conglomerate.”

The alarm on Lorenz’s face was palpable, but Claude had to admit he did play it off well. “Do I? I suppose I  _ am _ from there, so it’s only natural.”

“Well, it’s not that, just that I’ve met ol’ Vince before and I have to admit he looks your spitting image.” Claude sipped his coffee for added effect, the devil he was.

Lorenz looked around the diner again, slow and not intentionally deliberate. Then he turned back to Claude and was scowling. “Aren’t you quite the little private investigator? What do you want?”

_ “Relax, _ Lorenz,” and Claude meant it, because he was done with his tormenting for now. ”I’m not going to pry into the Gloucester personal life. Yet. I’m curious, but I have no reason to collect blackmail fodder. Your father’s quite the fiery character, isn’t he?”

Lorenz was still unhappy, it seemed, but it’s not as if he had any leverage. Who could care about a CEO preferring his coffee from a lowbrow diner, when the tantalising scandal of the disappeared Gloucester heir was right before them? He sniffed, “Indeed  _ sounds _ like him.”

The silence was unhappy and awkward between them and his gaze had now turned out the window to the busy citygoers going on with their day, unknowing of the corporate politics unfolding before them. Claude was happy to sit for a moment, because he  _ did _ have a nice pumpkin pie to polish off.

Well, very  _ okay _ pumpkin pie.

He was about to say something, but Lorenz spoke before him: “Does he ever talk about me?”

“I’m not his friend, Lorenz, I’m a business partner, and my old gramps he loved so much has popped his clogs.” But over the edge of his coffee cup, he  _ did _ fix him with a look that said, the answer to that question was pretty clear, wasn’t it?

“Oh. My condolences.”

“S’alright. I didn’t know Gramps for half my life, it’s hardly like he was my family.”

Of course, Claude heard the gossip of Vince Gloucester giving his only child the cold shoulder, but far earlier than that Lorenz had heard the chatter of Riegan finding its new heir (and how furious Father could be that as a major stakeholder he had no say in it). 

“An odd situation, it must’ve been.”

Claude waved his hand. “Don’t worry about it. I come here to get  _ away _ from business, anyway, so there’s no use talking about it. But I will tell you this: I’m not a bad guy. If it really is important to you, I won’t out your hidey-hole.”

He could by the slight relax of Lorenz’s thin frame he was getting through, so that was a good thing. Lorenz murmured, “... Thank you, Claude. Alright.”

“So long as I can still come here for Free Fries Friday, of course.”

Lorenz sighed, and Claude was glad to hear it was a weary one, but not a pained one. “You oughtn’t too, because the swill I serve might as well have been lived in by rats.”

“Come on, it’s good rats!”

He shook his head, and gestured at the newspaper. “A well-to-do man like you has never heard of a tablet?”

“You can’t scribble on a tablet,” and Claude dropped him a wink. The newspaper had laid abandoned all this time, his chrome ballpoint still sticking out of his pocket.

“You are quite the schemer, aren’t you?” Lorenz was about to continue, but he interrupted himself with a chuckle stifled by his own polite hand. “Excuse me, I just had a ridiculous notion. If we’d met as children, my father would’ve surely put me on to you find out what Riegan strategies you were planning.”

“A good plan,” Claude laughed. “Maybe we would’ve gone to the same private academy or something.

… So, have any hobbies?”

“Claude von Riegan, I  _ am _ still on shift. But I enjoy poetry, if you must know.”

He’d leant back to sip coffee at his leisure, but now he moved forward again to grin. “Oh,  _ fancy _ . Hit us with one then.”

Lorenz cleared his throat, and quoted,

“You say you love; but then your lips   
Coral tinted teach no blisses,   
More than coral in the sea—   
They never pout for kisses—   
O love me truly

— Keats, 1817.”

Claude whistled. “They don’t make them like that anymore, huh?”

He also tried Lorenz’s technique of making his expression as neutrally  _ natural _ , because he wasn’t content to sit in a diner and look as lovestruck as a schoolboy at the age of 22.

“I can assure you they do. I’ve been writing poetry since I were a boy.”

“Make sure you bring one for me to read, next time,” Claude flashed a wink, and then, “Say, over a Michelin star?

“ _ My _ , Claude von Riegan, do you ask out every server at every diner you go to?”

“Only the ones I come in every week to see. It’s a date?”

Loren brushed an arc of stray hair behind his ear, smiling soft at the table. He was now too embarrassed to meet Claude in the eyes, it seemed. The soft pink glow on his nose delighted his fading lip gloss (coral too).

His voice was melodic. “Yes, perhaps a date.”

**Author's Note:**

> Gay people


End file.
